simplifyingcloudintegration-2110753

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An Oracle White Paper

January 2014

Simplifying Cloud Integration

Oracle Cloud Integration A Comprehensive Solution


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Disclaimer

The following is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information

purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver

any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing

decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for

Oracles products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.


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Introduction ......................................................................................... 4Putting Cloud Integration in Context ................................................... 6

Introducing Oracle Fusion Middleware ............................................... 7A SOA Foundation .............................................................................. 8Types of Integration ............................................................................ 8Technical Considerations to Developing Cloud Integrations .............. 9Service Aggregation .......................................................................... 11Service Virtualization ........................................................................ 12Security Considerations .................................................................... 14Unified Monitoring and Management ................................................ 15Conclusion ........................................................................................ 16


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Introduction

Cloud computing solutions are widely hailed as a way to reduce capital expenditures and move to an

inexpensive, subscription-based IT model. However, many organizations dont stop to consider all of the nuancesof integrating cloud applications with their existing information systems. While deploying a cloud app or

subscribing to a cloud-based service may be relatively straightforward, how will this new IT asset fit in with the

rest of the enterprise, including on-premise systems and other cloud applications? What is the system of record

from which data will be derived? Which business processes are involved? Do you need an enterprise data model

that is independent of the cloud data model?

These questions are relevant for any type of integration project, with or without a cloud deployment. However,

they are particularly relevant in todays business world, where individual departments and lines of business

sometimes subscribe to cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications without the oversight of the IT

department, and without always adhering to best practices. This departmental autonomy introduces new

challenges in the areas of security, reliability, quality and the potential for a sharp rise in the number of disparate

toolsets.

SaaS-only vendors (not providing an on-premise option) typically provide packaged integration tools with basic

capabilities to manage the exchange of data for limited scenarios. When combining these integration tools from

multiple vendors however, you may find yourself managing disparate user interfaces and writing a lot of custom

code using a variety of different programming languages. While many cloud models are masqueraded under the

guise of simplicity, expanding an on-premise application infrastructure to include SaaS applications in an ad hoc

fashion can ultimately increase the complexity of your enterprise. In order to achieve the promised benefits of

cloud computing, such as greater flexibility and lower costs, a cohesive vision for unifying SaaS applications with

on-premise information systems is highly recommended.

Thus instead of focusing only on quick connectivity, CIOs must ensure that all aspects of cloud integration align

with their strategic vision for IT, with attention to audits and compliance, security standards, and governance.

Many cloud vendors showcase simplistic integrations that demonstrate basic connectivity while ignoring the real

integration challenges that the IT team will face, including system configuration issues, application

customizations, non-functional requirements, reliability, scalability, and security.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) differ greatly from one cloud app to another. Each vendor enforces its

own mechanisms for security, message delivery, metadata definitions, query criteria, object semantics, and

object schema. It is helpful to have a universal way to mask these technical details and enforce consistency at a

logical level. Ideally, developers should be able to mediate among multiple applications from one centralized

integration platform that leverages the various cloud vendor interfaces to automate both inbound and outbound

connectivity. Having a robust, centralized integration platform minimizes the complexity associated with

managing the APIs from various cloud vendors.


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This white paper describes how to integrate on-premise and cloud applications, such as Oracle Fusion

Applications, Salesforce.com, Workday and many more, with this type of pragmatic, universal perspective. The

hub for these integrations are the Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle data integration products, part of Oracle Fusion

Middleware, a unified platform that accommodates all types of information systems, deployment models, SaaS

vendors, and Platform as a Service (PaaS) infrastructure, anchored by a cohesive set of tools for development,

management, security, and governance.


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Putting Cloud Integration in Context

Integration entails exchanging information among systems to achieve a specific business objective such as synchronization

of customer account data for fulfilling orders. The location of an application and its datawhether in your data center or

under the auspices of a cloud providerdoes not change this basic business need. While many enterprises have committedsome level of investment to the cloud, most of these organizations have to deal with on-premise systems in tandemor

fuse data from another cloud app.

For example, an enterprise that relies on an on-premise CRM application might acquire a company that uses a SaaS-based

CRM application. Account managers need to be able to access data from both systems in a cohesive way, share data

between these systems, and ultimately establish an authoritative system of record that encompasses all customers. Diversity

also creeps into the enterprise when an individual department subscribes to its own SaaS based CRM application.

Departmental users may enjoy the ease and convenience of a rapid cloud deployment, yet they probably still need to access

data from the corporate CRM systemand possibly merge the two.

Similarly, HR systems, payroll systems, and incentive compensation systems typically need to exchange information so that

employees are properly compensated and paid. These are classic integration scenarios that IT pros have been dealing withfor decades. As companies move one or more of these business functions to the cloud, creating the required connectivity

takes on a new dimension. For example, your main employee data might reside in an on-premise HR system. If you utilize

SaaS-based services for payroll, talent management, incentive compensation, or other employee-related functions, you will

need to move data to and from the cloud.

Most enterprises have spent years avoiding the data silos that inhibit productivity. IT has had its fill of new integration

paradigms, from CORBA to Client/Server to Web services, EAI and SOA. After decades of locking down critical issues

such as interface definitions, governance, reliability, transaction management, exception handling, and transaction

monitoring, is it time to reinvent the wheel yet again for the cloud era? Do cloud applications represent a new silo?

Without proper planning, its easy to end up with an Accidental SOA Cloud Architecture characterized by point-to-point

connections from individual departments to the cloud, bypassing any well-established integration architecture. Thesecustom interfaces are fraught with problems, often tactical rather than strategic, leading to brittle connections that are

difficult to upgrade when endpoints change.


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Figure 1: Business units bypassing IT best practices (security, SLAs, monitoring, etc.) resulting in an Accidental SOA Cloud Architecture

Once these applications are deployed, lack of centralized monitoring and management causes extra work for system

administrators. And with no clear ownership or centralized accountability for particular integrations, the enterprise ends up

hiring and maintaining a diverse set of skilled resources to create and maintain the interfaces.

Cloud data and functions often must be shared with on-premise information systems. Similarly, private clouds that depend

on local data often need to feed that data to cloud-based applications, or trigger events through the firewall as part of amulti-step workflow. Balancing these initiatives requires careful planning if you dont want to end up with a new set of

spaghetti integrations that are inflexible and difficult to manage.

Analysts and other industry experts often cite integration as one of the barriers to adoption of cloud services, especially for

apps that need to exchange logic and information in this way. Its no wonder that SaaS integration has become one of the

most sought after skills among IT professionals, including technical architects who understand SaaS connectivity and

functional architects who understand the intricacies of the data being exchanged. SaaS integration challenges may in fact be

bigger than the old integration challenges you faced with on-premise CRM and ERP systems. While the integration issues

havent changed, the cloud introduces additional complexities that need to be specifically accounted for.

Introducing Oracle Fusion Middleware

Fortunately, with Oracle Fusion Middleware, one set of integration tools can handle all of these integration scenarios, with

direct and interchangeable connections to cloud, on-premise, and legacy systems. Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Data

Integration and other components of the Oracle Fusion Middleware family provide a cohesive set of integration

capabilities to simplify diverse IT environments.

For example, the Oracle Cloud Adapter for Salesforce.com simplifies the integration of existing applications with

Salesforce.com to allow your field sales teams to have real-time access to all of your on-premise applications. In other

scenarios, Web service-based integration may be more appropriate and Oracles support for Web services enables you to

easily connect to on-premise and cloud-based services through one cohesive middleware platform. Developers can initiate


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Web services calls to and from cloud applications and connect to on-premise information systems via adapters that mask

the technical nuances between applications and data models such as connectivity options, session management,

authentication, and authorization. Whether the systems at hand include PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards,

SAP, Salesforce, or other common applications, Oracle provides a comprehensive integration solution.

A SOA Foundation

Since most cloud applications support Web service integration, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an ideal strategy

to address cloud integration, especially considering the additional re-use of services through new mobile and API

Management channels. Many established SOA concepts, considerations, and design patterns are even more relevant in the

world of cloud integration than in an on-premise-only scenario. Oracle SOA Suite simplifies connectivity by enabling

developers to set up and manage universal services and orchestrate them into composite applications and business

processes. It utilizes an enterprise service bus (ESB) as the foundation for shared services, process orchestration, event

processing, and business activity monitoring so that organizations can have visibility into their entire application

infrastructure and flexibility as they adopt additional cloud services in the future.

Figure 2: A unified approach to integration with Oracle SOA Suite and Data Integration components

Types of Integration

Cloud integration scenarios fall into a couple of familiar models.Application integrationrefers to interfaces that are event-

driven, near real-time, and impact business operations. For example, if you are an online retailer selling products to

customers, orders accepted through a customer-facing website must be routed to a back-end fulfillment system, which

initiates processes related to order confirmation, inventory management, and shipping. The processes are relatively similar

whether the front-end system is on premise or in the cloud: the CRM application sends information to the destination

application, such as routing an order to a back end fulfillment system.

Data Integration scenarios come into play when you are moving large volumes of data in batch mode, such as when your

sales database is migrated to the cloud to populate a cloud-based contact management system. In these instances you must


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consider the volume and frequency of data integration daily, nightly, weekly, etc. You might begin with a batch upload of

historical data followed by periodic data updates each day, week, or month. If these integrations are done on-premise,

security is less of an issue. If you are interfacing with a cloud app, the security requirements will undoubtedly be stricter.

For both real time and batch-level interfaces, developers can always set up point-to-point interfaces. However, the

protocols, file formats and metadata will vary from one cloud vendor to another. Rather than manually coding for these

distinctions, they will save time by coding once to a data integration platform that can mask these distinctions, especially as

the number of cloud providers in the IT ecosystem expands.

Oracle provides a simple and consistent method to create and maintain these interfaces. It doesnt matter if the interfaces

are from SaaS to SaaS, SaaS to on-premise, on-premise to SaaS, or on-premise to on-premise, Oracle can connect to any

kind of SOAP or REST Web service using Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Technical Considerations to Developing Cloud Integrations

Addressing the Key Integration Challenges with Cloud Applications

As previously stated, there is certainly more to integration with cloud applications than making that simple Web service

call. There are several significant design-time and runtime considerations including but not limited to interface and

business object discovery, security configuration, session management etc. Moreover different cloud applications expose

metrics, object structures, and security requirements in different ways.

This disparity adds complexity in development and maintenance of integrations, and an increased time-to-market as the

number of cloud applications in the enterprise integration mix grows. Moreover, just having access to the service WSDL

and the interface details are not the only prerequisite to establish connectivity and engage in conversation with some of the

SaaS applications. Take the example of Salesforce.com. The actual Web service endpoint on Salesforce.com is generated at

runtime and cannot be hardcoded at design-time. Moreover, the user needs to call the login operation before executing any

of the actual operations. The dynamic session id that is returned from the login call needs to be passed to Salesforce.com

on every following invocation thereafter. This is a security mechanism used by Salesforce.com for validating the web

service call. The integration modeler has to be fully aware of these considerations in order to be able to effectivelyintegrate with the application.

Simplifying Cloud Integration through Oracle Fusion Middleware and Cloud Adapters

Oracle Fusion Middleware significantly simplifies integration with cloud applications such as Salesforce.com by providing a

standards-based platform for integration that not only enables connectivity, but also lays a strong foundation to address

aspects of audits, compliance, security and governance. Most recently, the suite offers native connectivity and enhanced

developer productivity while integrating with SaaS applications such as Salesforce.com through Oracle Cloud Adapters.

These Oracle Cloud Adapters have been introduced as a key component on top of Oracle SOA Suite and build on the

service-based integration platform to enable standards based connectivity to cloud based applications from on-premise,

legacy and other cloud applications, while significantly simplifying the overall life-cycle and user experience. They shield the

integration modeler from hand-coding and configuring dedicated logic for handling connectivity, security, and session

management individually for each cloud application being integrated. They also eliminate the requirement for the user to

have in-depth expertise on the complex functional and technical knowledge of the applications.

Oracle Cloud Adapter for Salesforce.com enables seamless and simplified connectivity with Salesforce.com through its

intuitive design-time wizards and rich processing options. In contrast to exposing complex WSDL interfaces for the

original Salesforce.com service, The Salesforce.com adapter configuration wizard engages users with an extremely

simplified view of the business object catalog in Salesforce.com from where they could browse and select one or more

objects of interest for executing CRUD style interactions, or graphically model SOSL/SOQL queries on these objects.

Most importantly, most of the nuances of integrating with Salesforce.com such as session management, handling the

complex WSDL and security are addressed within the adapter itself. Users are not exposed to these complexities and


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instead, can focus on fulfilling the business requirement at hand. With all these tasks delegated to the adapter, the

likelihood of manual errors is significantly minimized; development cycles are reduced and maintenance costs are also

lowered.

Figure 3: The business object catalog browser for Salesforce.com within the Oracle SOA Suite cloud adapter configuration

wizard accessed provides an intuitive and simple way to discover and integrate with Salesforce business objects.


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Figure 3: The SOQL/SOSL query editor within the Oracle Cloud Adapter for Salesforce.com adapter design-time provides

a design-time test utility to validate the queries modeled by the user

For those applications with which native connectivity is not available yet in the form of adapters, OracleFusion Middleware provides intuitive graphical design tools that enable users to model integrations withoutthe need to write any additional custom code.Users can also leverage a built-in declarative security policy framework that provides capabilities to define,enforce, and monitor security policies on your invocation such as authentication, authorization,confidentiality, integrity etc. in a fully non-intrusive fashion. For instance SaaS applications such as OracleFusion Applications or the cloud based HCM application Workday usually mandate policies that require theservice consumer to invoke its Web service over SSL and furnish a WS-Security header containing theusername and password during each invocation. With Oracle Fusion Middleware, users can configure anduse the out-of-the-box security policies such as oracle/wss_username_token_over_ssl_client_policyfor theinvocation.

Figure 4: WS Security configuration with out of the box security policies

Service Aggregation

Most APIs provided by cloud vendors are at a low level of granularity. Customers must tie these discrete APIs together

through a design pattern known as service aggregation to create the high-level data-exchange functions that constitute an

inbound service. Oracle Fusion Middleware supports this process through a graphical user interface using the familiar

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). Oracle BPEL Process Manager allows users to orchestrate service

invocations to various heterogeneous systems and then expose these aggregations via a single service call. The Oracle

BPEL engine can orchestrate service invocations across multiple service providers, coordinating the interaction among and

between business processes.


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Figure 5: Oracle BPEL process manager shown with service level orchestration across multiple on-premise and cloudapplications

Service aggregation lets application designers operate at a much higher level, ignoring discrete granular details. For

example, a developer can simply drag and drop multiple web service invocations to handle chatty API conversations with a

single application (e.g. Taleo service) and expose a Web service to clients. Developers can also perform data enrichment,

for example to add data to sparse records and convert them to complete records, as is expected by an ERP system. In

addition, the developer can also expose a service that interacts with multiple applications (shown in the screenshot above),

creating new value-added business functionality that can be easily reused across the enterprise.

Service Virtualization

Service Virtualization provides a similar level of abstraction for groups of service calls. In these situations, Web services

calls dont go directly to the applications, but rather to an enterprise service bus that sends them on to the correct

applications. This type of virtual architecture allows a client to be loosely coupled with a service provider, permitting an

enterprise to easily add and remove cloud vendors. The integration platform interfaces with the service bus, and the service

bus interfaces with the providers. If a provider changes its API definition, that change is handled by the service bus, which

has the flexibility to transpose dozens of different data types and network protocols into a common format, with no

changes to the on-premise applications.


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This is especially crucial in todays SaaS market, where tier 1 cloud vendors tend to release two to four versions of their

products each year. Interfacing with these new versions without have service virtualization in place put a tremendous

burden on the IT personnel who are overloaded with keeping their systems in sync with these frequent updates.

Figure 6: Clients (left side) are shown calling back-end processes, one of which has gone down. The Automated Service

Pooling feature within Oracle Service Bus routes the service request to the live business process to ensure every call is

successful.

For example, a company that deploys a payroll system in a private cloud might later decide to utilize the SaaS version of the

same application. Simple modifications to the service virtualization layer will shield the enterprise from having to make

major adjustments. The middleware platform is comprehensive and flexible enough to automatically account fordifferences between the two deployments. Similarly, if your cloud vendor is acquired or goes out of business, you have

lowered your risk by creating this layer of separation between your infrastructure and the cloud. Service Virtualization sets

you up to adopt the best cloud vendors for your needs with minimal changes.

Service Virtualization is especially useful if you customize a SaaS instance. Once you make changes, the cloud vendor gives

you a WSDL containing these customizations. You must update every client interface that utilizes that particular API.

However, if all of your clients interface to the shared services layer, the middleware platform will handle the transformation

to the API call, including any new customizations that have to be updated.


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Figure 7: Sales and Marketing departments interfacing with Oracle Cloud, 3rd

party cloud vendors, and on-premise applications through

service virtualization thereby eliminating point-to-point integration challenges

Security Considerations

When on-premise enterprises expand to include cloud applications, security concerns draw increased attention. Security

policies that protect information at the transport layer, message layer and authorization layer have the typical on-premise

security topics as well as some new ones. IT pros must continually address threats like denial of service attacks and

intrusions from rogue sites. SOX, HIPAA, PCI-Data Security, and other regulations require companies to establish privacy

and data integrity policies when communicating through cloud services.

Oracle API Gateway manages all of these connections, including the API keys that connect cloud services such as Amazon

Web Services (AWS). It applies critical governance controls for service access, usage, and availability and aggregates multi-

domain services such as Force.com and Google Apps. This approach also helps mitigate delays and outages that are

outside of your control by caching frequently accessed data.


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Figure 8: Oracle API Gateway working in conjunction with Oracle Identity Management

Oracle API Gateway is tightly integrated with Oracle Access Manager, Oracle Entitlements Server, Oracle Web Services

Manager, and Oracle SOA Suite to provide transport- and application-level security for web services requests.

In conjunction with the web services management features within Oracle SOA Suite, IT administrators can set policies to

authorize and authenticate Web service invocations such as requiring a username/password, a SAML token, or encryption

for sensitive data. These security definitions are loosely coupled with the implementation of the associated services, which

means administrators can easily change or update the policies without writing a single line of code. The policies can be

applied interchangeably among on-premise and cloud applications. Finally, because Web services security is closely related

to identity management, Oracle API Gateway enables you to apply unified security policies for the Oracle IdentityManagement offering.

Unified Monitoring and Management

Whether you are supporting enterprise cloud apps or traditional IT applications, you need to be able to proactively monitor

these business applications and their underlying IT infrastructure. The long-term goal is to manage cloud resources as

business services rather than just a collection of technical components. End-to-end oversight is especially important when

business processes are distributed among on-premise and cloud-based systems. For example, an order entry transaction

might be initiated by an on-premise system, trigger updates to a cloud-based CRM system, and then log an inventory check

in a legacy warehouse management system. If something goes wrong during any part of this workflow, it may be difficult to

determine what caused the problem. The Oracle SOA Management Pack, available within Oracle Enterprise Manager,allows you to see the entire flow of the message through one management console.


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Figure 9: Unified end-to-end flow trace in a single interface within Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c

This complete cloud lifecycle management solution allows you to quickly set up, manage and support enterprise clouds and

traditional Oracle IT environments, with consistent monitoring from application to disk. It includes discovery capabilities

to identify all the elements of an IT environment, as well as capacity-planning tools to advise IT professionals about how

to view the environment as a shared infrastructure. A wizard-driven, role-based management console helps them manage

everything from capacity planning to chargeback.

What happens if you lack a universal repository for managing SOA activities? SaaS-only vendors typically point you to

detailed API documentation or a very simplified page listing all WSDLs. However without clarity about service expected

usage patterns, SLAs, role-based access control visibility, and dependency analysis of the underlying integration metadata

for change management, the integration effort multiplies quickly as your cloud initiatives expand.

Oracle Enterprise Repository acts as the single source of truth for information surrounding SOA assets and their

dependencies and provides a common communication channel for the automated exchange of metadata and service

information between service consumers, providers, policy decision points, and other governance tools. Rather than dealing

with these issues on a case-by-case basis, this repository provides visibility into the entire SOA ecosystem and its

dependencies, including assets in planning and development.

Conclusion

Despite the temptation to simplify cloud integration down to a two-page white paper or a five-minute demo, a successfulcloud integration strategy goes well beyond simple connectivity. In this white paper, we have described a comprehensive

cloud integration solution, which starts with connectivity but includes the equally important topics of service virtualization,

security, security gateways, service aggregation, and unified monitoring and management.

One lesson that has proven itself to be true over the last 20 years of software integration is to avoid rigid, unique, point-to-

point connections between application providers and clients. Instead create logical connections to a service bus or

virtualization later, so that you dont have to continually re-code each interface as your information systems change and

evolve. This is especially important today, given the rapid churn in the SaaS market. Having a flexible integration platform

helps enterprises to maximize their options and lower risk.


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When moving from the on-premise world to a hybrid world that includes cloud vendors, external companies become an

integral part of your infrastructure. Not all of these vendors uphold the same policies, procedures, and principles that you

have established in your own business. One of the biggest issues in using public clouds is integrating them with on-premise

applications. To solve this issue, you need to enable universal connectivity to a common platform that can seamlessly

bridge dissimilar technologies in a consistent way.

Oracle Fusion Middleware components, including Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle Enterprise

Repository, and Oracle Enterprise Manager, deliver a cohesive and flexible integration platform bolstered by connectors

and adapters to hundreds of popular databases and applications. This unified approach is superior to the patchwork

strategy of managing an increasing number of disparate integration toolsets provided by each SaaS-only vendor. No matter

how your information systems evolve, Oracle can simplify the complexity with a cohesive integration platform that

accommodates all types of cloud services, applications, and infrastructure.


January 2014

Author: David Baum, Rajesh Raheja, Bruce

Tierney, Ram Menon, Vijay Pawar

Oracle Corporation

World Headquarters

500 Oracle Parkway

Redwood Shores, CA 94065

U.S.A.

Worldwide Inquiries:

Phone: +1.650.506.7000

Fax: +1.650.506.7200

oracle.com

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warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or

fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are

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